I can do basics, You know checking my hardware, cd to a dir, bring up -man of commands, stuff like that.

What I am wondering is what is the best way for one to get familiar with using the terminal as the main source of operation? I pretty much want to jump in the deep-end (well maybe the middle 7 feet or so), but with my knowledge of commands can pretty much just sit here and type $ls, $lspci,$uname ... and that gets dull. I want to utilize the terminal and have something to show for it, but do not know where to begin. I got linux so I could interact with the system, and though I am doing more of that then with MS I feel I am not doing enough.

I do not know if I have worded this well, or properly described what my overall goal is, But I would be happy to elaborate if needed. Any & All suggestions are very welcome ... Thanks

Now that you know some basic commands you should learn some more. Have a look here: http://linuxcommand.org/
This will show you more commands, how to chain them together and how to write shell scripts to make your work reusable.

2 members found this post helpful.

The first 2 lines of the site say it all
I've been skimming and it seems written simply enough without being dumbed down, and appears to be exactly what I was looking for.

Skip to the bottom if you don't care to read my random opinions and just want some good links.

Aside from Firefox and a few other very useful desktop apps, I do almost all my work at the command line. I have found that the only reason I use any desktop apps is a simple preference for the GUI in certain situations.

The Linux command line isn't a crippled environment like CMD.EXE from Windows. In Linux you can do all the most common computing tasks on the command line. I might say, "There is a command for anything you might want to do.", but that is not true; there are usually a multitude of commands to choose from for any specific task.

Many commands in Linux are not simple commands, but they full blown programs with their own scripting language. A great example is AWK, which many people use to do simple things like this:

That's fine, until you learn that AWK is a full blown, C-like programming language with an almost unlimited field of potential applications. Of course the same is true, in varying degrees, of sed, perl, python, ruby, bash, find and others. Linux is literally bursting with programming languages waiting for you to learn them.

Linuxcommand.org was already mentioned. Here are some more for you.

• GNU Manuals for the multitude of GNU programs common to Linux systems
• Basic UNIX commands
• More UNIX Commands
• LINUX: Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition by Paul Sheer teaches Linux command line from the perspective of a former MS-DOS user
• The Linux Users' Guide by Larry Greenfield
• FTLinuxCourse by Future Technologies
• The Linux Tutorial by James Mohr
• An A-Z Index of the Bash command line for Linux.
• Bash by example, Part 1
• Learn Linux, 101: The Linux command line
• Learn Linux, 101: File and directory management
• Linux Files and Command Reference
• Agustin's Linux manual - Volume 2 - System Administration
• BashGuide BashPitfalls BashFAQ - Greg's Wiki
• Bash Guide for Beginners
• Learn UNIX in 10 minutes
• http://freeos.com/guides/lsst/index.html
• GNU/Linux Tools Summary
• Linux.ie :: The Beginners Linux Guide
• Linux Classes and Training. Free Linux Lessons.
• Main Page - Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial - A Beginner's handbook

HTH

1 members found this post helpful.

Actually, a good way to get really familiar with the cmd line is to try to solve problems posted here at LQ. Whether you solve them or not doesn't really matter; you learn an awful lot during the attempt, and also from solns that are posted by others.

2 members found this post helpful.

Random opinions are what I asked for. That's alot of links! I should be busy for awhile, Thank you.


That's pretty much what I've been doing up till now. It's how I learned about: ls, grep, echo, cmake, locate, apt-get,etc. If I see something that looks like I can maybe offer some kind of insight, I try ... and if not, I ask about it or google it.

I would have googled this, Except I didn't really know how to explain to a search engine what it was I wanted.

Just my 2cents: I randomly found a book called "Linux Phrasebook" by Scott Granneman.
It describes some common commands for everyday use with their most common arguments, and is very well organised.
It certainly doesn't substitute "man command", but I always carry that book.

Yeah, the links from Telengard are .. comprehensive (& then some ), but they can feel a bit dry unless you've got a specific problem to solve.
A combination of study and applying them in real life works best.
The 'real life' bit often teaches you little wrinkles that the guides may not; true for any prog lang/tech tool.